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Posts Tagged ‘robin soderling’

Not good words, though. So first allow me to distract you with the coolest photo I may have ever seen.

Gladiator.

OK, so. I’ve been putting off blogging about this, not because I’m not happy about it, but because I’m not really sure what I can say about it, apart from ‘wow’. (Although I recommend everyone reads C Note’s fantastic post on Rafa’s mentality, if you haven’t already.) In the nicest possible way, the final felt like going back in time, in that I didn’t really learn anything from it that I didn’t already know. To wit …

… Rafa is awesome. He is. He was. Ruthless in defense, relentless in his pursuit of every single ball and every single point, and able to bring again that twist of wonder (slightly sick wonder, if you’re rooting for the other guy) at doing things not just that no-one else can do, but that it seems no-one should be able to do. If you want that slightly more technically, you’re on the wrong blog I was particularly impressed with the consistent depth he got on his shots and how well he served, two elements that were missing last time he played Soderling at Roland Garros. And if you want it in numbers … well, it’s his fifth Roland Garros title; he got the Clay Slam (it’s a thing); he won twenty-two straight matches; and he dropped just two sets doing it (neither in Paris). I mean, what can you say about that? Apart from ‘please can you donate some of your sperm to British tennis’? I know some ladies who will volunteer to, er, take care of the logistics.

Love the look on the ballgirl’s face.

… Rafa likes winning. I amused myself throughout the third set by wondering whether he’d cry. He did. And if you saw his celebrations, it was impossible not to get some sense of just how much it meant to him. It can be a little mystifying, but it’s never less than moving. And it’s not about the numbers or the ranking; it’s just about being there, playing his tennis, and winning. It’s as pure and impenetrable as that.

Q. When you won, did you feel that this was a triumph of all the hardships that you’ve experienced over this past year?RAFAEL NADAL: The feeling is when you win you know how many hours you had on court, how many hours you was thinking and working to play your best tennis, how much time you wait to win another time a title.
For me was 11 months without win a title, so a lot of tournaments going back to home without a victory. A lot of moments, difficult moments, because in a few of these tournaments I had to retired for the problems.
So is difficult moments to accept I say before, and this, sure, it’s very important for me. It was personal goal to be back at my best. So I did.
And for me, sure, the important thing is Roland Garros. But for me the biggest thing is the personal satisfaction to be here, to be here another time and to be at the top level.

And he really means it.

… Winning Slams is really, really hard. And no, this didn’t just dawn on me, but it did grow out of the similarities I saw on Sunday to Murray’s performance against Federer in Melbourne, and Stosur’s performance against Schiavone on Saturday. In all three cases, the losing player had been to some extent the player of the tournament, providing the upsets, the drama, the out-of-this-world performances. Robin’s tennis against Marin and against Federer reached a level for me, like Sam against Justine and JJ, that their opponent had not matched throughout. And yet it gets to the final, and that tennis simply isn’t there.

For the record, I don’t think Robin played a bad match at all. He wasn’t superlative, but honestly I think that was Rafa as much as anything else. Rafa played so well and gave Robin so few opportunities that when Robin did work himself into a position that he had the point on his racquet, he overpressed and missed. And while Robin is perfectly capable of overcoming that – we’ve seen him do it – on the day, in the moment, for the final, he just didn’t have it.

And then this happens.

The situation is of course exacerbated when you have two players at the top of the rankings who are so consistently and phenomenally capable of bringing it on the big occasion, which really underlines how incredibly bloody difficult it is to beat Federer and Nadal in the same Slam (raise your hand, Delpo – the left one, please. And carefully.) Honestly, what kind of absurd heights is someone going to have to reach in order to beat Nadal in a final at Roland Garros? Are we ever going to see it? Answers on a postcard.

… Robin is adorable. In case this message hasn’t filtered through. He is as nice, as sweet and as gracious as you could ask for. So there.

But like I say … I already knew all of the above. I really did. There may have been some ridiculous premature burial of Rafa by elements of the media and the fandom over the past twelve months, but I believed that it would be revealed to be totally myopic once Rafa got his feet (and functioning knees) back on clay, and so it has proved. I know that often being a fan leads more readily to despair, whether because you care more or because it’s an effective method of insulating yourself. But did anyone really believe that we wouldn’t see this again?

I’m really asking. Now that the dust has somewhat settled, what did you make of the final? Deja vu all over again, or did you find this triumphant reprise of familiar themes satisfying? To quote Daniel Bedingfield … I wanna know.

I didn’t like Robin Soderling very much in the past. I always thought of him as a somewhat grumpy, slightly odd player who couldn’t control his temper and while that’s exactly my flavour, I wasn’t enchanted enough with his game to root for him in earnest. His match against Nadal at last year’s Roland Garros changed that – not just because he blew the tournament wide open, but because he achieved the impossible and played at what seemed like an inconceivably high level for long enough to beat Nadal in his house, and you have to take notice of that. His emotional reaction to the victory, his run to the final and his behaviour throughout made me like him too, and more and more frequently after that I found myself rooting for him. Still, I’ve kept underestimating him ever since. How often have we seen players have one great season and then fade away? After he lost first round in Melbourne, I expected him to keep right on plummeting, unable to sustain whatever magic he’d found in 2009. I think it’s fair to say he hasn’t.

Robin Soderling d. Roger Federer, 36 63 75 64

How fucking impressive was this? I have to come clean and admit that I missed the conclusion of the match after the rain delay; I had to leave work and by the time I got home it was over and the expletive-worthy Eurosport player only archived the first portion of the match. I’m hoping to catch a repeat tomorrow morning, but in the meantime I’m just going to assume that Robin kept on doing what he did in the second and third sets, which is … what he does; powerful serving, big clean hitting, relentless attacking. He’s done it before against Federer – most memorably at last year’s US Open when he came *this* close to seriously unsettling the defending champion – but whether because he executed better, or because clay gives him just a fraction of a second longer to set up, or because the conditions let him impose more when he let fly as he consistently did, or just because it was his day, it worked. It really quite a lot worked.

I really don’t need to reiterate the magnitude of what he’s achieved; for the second year in a row, breaking a domination that seemed inevitable, turning history and a head-to-head on its … head. But I do want to say why I think I find it so satisfying, and not just because it’s always great to see an underdog win (or because I now have a cool kind of ‘what’s going to happen?!’ feeling about the next few days of tennis, which is always nice). I think it’s because before Roland Garros 2009, Soderling really seemed to have maxed out, not in terms of what he could achieve, but what he was ever going to achieve. After all, don’t we usually assume that once a player has reached their mid-20s without a really big victory to their name that they won’t ever get there, or that if they do they won’t stay long – that they’re lacking whatever crucial element it takes to truly make an impact? One great tournament, fair enough, but it’s usually rapidly followed by a return to their previous level. Soderling, on the other hand, took a huge step up and then kept going; presented himself as a new man and then sustained that transformation, even I think improving over the past twelve months. He interrupted the Fedal dialogue and has now irrefutably made himself part of the conversation, and it’s great not just because I like him, but because I think every fan out there has one or two players that they’ve always believed was capable of more if they could just get their head on straight, shake those niggling injuries, rise to the occasion, put it all together on the day. And Soderling for me really proves that it is possible, it is always possible, not just to reinvent yourself as a contender but to keep on challenging at the highest level. That’s a magnitude of impressive that I don’t have the words for. And I love seeing it.

Lovely Andrea Petkovic led by a set, 5-4 and 40-0 against Svetlana Kuznetsova.

She lost.

Robin dropped just two games to Taylor Dent and looks to be on awesome form (oh please, let that be true!)

Aravane literally doesn’t know the meaning of backing off, and it’s working for her as she survived a tough challenge from Angelique Kerber.

This guy’s playing. In case you didn’t know.

This girl’s playing. In case you care.

Marin is into the third round after playing a mere seven sets. Weird.

The more I have to listen to male journalists snigger and judge about Venus’ dress, the more I love it. Sod them all, she looks amazing.

Say hello to Julian Reister. Before this tournament, he’d played three ATP matches in his career and lost them all. Now he’s beaten Feliciano Lopez and Olivier Rochus and he’s in the third round of Roland Garros. And stuff like this is why I love Slams.

I’m still grinning like a fool about how this worked out, so can I recommend that you visit VamosDavid for their excellent match reports? I’ll just be doing the hyperbole and silly picspams as per usual.

Now we’ve got that sorted out … The day didn’t start out too well for Argentina as Leonardo Mayer was first up against Robin Soderling, facing the difficult (and as it turned out, nigh-impossible) task of clinching the tie after the doubles left Argentina with a 2-1 lead. It didn’t work out so well.

One actually can’t blame Leo for throwing his toys out of the pram. I thought he played really well and kept the match very close as the scoreline shows. That said, the gulf in class clearly showed in key moments, and Robin was really impressive despite carrying the burden of keeping the tie alive. He’s turning into a great Davis Cup player and it’s a shame in some ways that he doesn’t really have anyone to back him up.

But you couldn’t fault Leo for effort. He was virtually crying as Robin served the match out in emphatic style, and left the court broken-hearted – without even any shirtless cuddling to make him (and us) feel better.

So that left the tie poised at 2-2 with one match to decide two nation’s fates. A tricky situation, delicately balanced between triumph and disaster, agony and elation. The kind of moment when you really need someone to step up and be the hero, someone who’s done it all before, who knows what it’s like to win and lose big, someone capable of bringing a bit of class and magic to the court … someone, not to put too fine a point on it, not Eduardo Schwank.

Well hello there.

It wasn’t, to be frank, Nalbandian’s best performance. Apparently he only decided ten minutes before the match that he was actually going to play, having felt some pain after the doubles yesterday, and he started off distinctly rusty and seemingly unsure of his tactics. Vinciguerra, in fact, missed several opportunities to impose himself at the beginning of the match which could have changed the course of the whole thing. As it was, Nalbandian seemingly won the first set through grim determination more than anything else.

After that he loosened up and almost at times looked like the Nalbandian of old (had anybody else forgotten a bit just how good that is? His ball-striking is basically the sex), outclassing Vinciguerra throughout the second set and might have won in straights had he not taken a tumble diving for an unexpectedly stinging cross-court forehand when he was serving to stay in the third. The fall seemed to jar him a bit (hopefully doing no lingering damage, please god) and the third set unexpectedly slipped away.

But when he came out for the fourth, he had a look on his face which said pretty clearly that he had no intention of losing it, and so it proved. 75 63 46 64, and still the bad daddy of Davis Cup.

We bow before you.

I don’t want to make it seem like Nalbandian won this tie single-handed. Leo Mayer did incredibly well to recover and win against Joachim Johansson, without which Argentina would have had no chance. Horacio Zeballos really impressed in the doubles and was probably the best player out there. But quite apart from the crucial fifth rubber, you can’t underestimate the value of experience and inspiration, and it seems like Nalbandian risked his playing health to provide both this weekend.

Huge congratulations to Elena. She had some tough opponents to deal with, none more so than Lucie. The third set was really great stuff and should be taken as a smack in the face to all those who say that the WTA doesn’t produce good finals. That Elena burst into tears when she won really showed how much it meant to her.

And just when things couldn’t get more heartwarming, Momo presented her with the trophy.

Robin Soderling d. Mikhail Youzhny, 64 20 ret.

Poor, poor Mikhail Youzhny. He played so well to beat Nole in the semis (just like he did to beat Gasquet at the AO), then once again injury strikes him down. He was clearly heartbroken. Sad face.

A hearty ‘yay’ to Robin Soderling though. He had a nightmare at Chennai and the AO and a lot of people have been questioning whether he would be able to back up last year’s career-best achievements. Well, he’s not doing badly so far.

Vera Zvonareva d. Tamarine Tanasugarn, 64 64

Welcome back to the winner’s circle, Vera.

(Other tourney results to follow as soon as they finish / I can find decent photos.)

Not a great day for the big boys in Rotterdam. Robin Soderling is definitely back to form, beating Kolya 76(3) 64 to claim his seventh win over the Russian in eleven attempts.

The second semifinal was even tighter, but Mikhail Youzhny beat Novak Djokovic 76(5) 76(6). Squeaky. I don’t even know what to say about this one: Nole wasn’t serving great, but nor was Youzhny. Just a little bit of concentration and focus lacking at key moments, maybe – the usual Nole malaise? Not liking it up at there at no. 2? I don’t even know.

But yay for Youzhny. God knows, he’s got the game to be challenging at this level on a consistent basis.

Semi-finals are set in Rotterdam and it’s a very decent lineup. Nole has somehow sneaked his way in there despite only playing one match after getting a walkover from Florian Mayer. He’ll face Mikhail Youzhny, who won a highly entertaining against Gael Monfils. The commentators were intent on casting it as Russian meticulousness and tenacity against French flair, which does something of a disservice to both their games, but in the end Youzhny was that little bit more focussed in the end.

In the other half of the draw, Nikolay Davydenko and Robin Soderling both progressed in straight sets. Kolya calmly saw off Jurgen Melzer, 63 62.

Talk to the hand.

I would like to pinch your cheeks, Kolya. Take that as you will.

Robin Soderling, however, put in the most dominant performance of the day, utterly dismissing Julien Benneteau 60 61.